Presidential House Retrospective: A Pennsylvania Yankee in King Andrew's Court

If James Monroe is Bill Pullman in Sleepless in Seattle, then Andrew Jackson is Clint Eastwood, specifically Clint Eastwood in Dirty Harry. He’s mean, he’s tough, he doesn’t suffer fools, he’s really unstable, and yet you kind of like him. Intellectually, I realize that Andrew Jackson had a lot of unsavory qualities and made many damaging decisions, but I can’t help but admire many aspects of his personality.

By the age of fourteen he was already orphaned and in the militia during the Revolutionary War. He was captured by the British and ordered to clean a British commander’s boots, and his refusal won him a saber slash to the forehead. Thus began Andrew Jackson’s intense hatred of the British, which would spur him on to major victories against the British during the War of 1812. His campaigns during the war also demonstrated his undeniable leadership ability. During the Battle of New Orleans, Jackson led a ragtag group of militia men and pirates to victory against superior British forces. Getting this group of misfits not to kill each other would have been impressive; leading them to victory is almost miraculous.

Andrew Jackson continued to live a miraculous life-- miraculous in that it was a miracle he survived it. In a time when a toothache could kill you, Jackson survived a slew of incidents that would have easily ended in death for almost anyone else. Many of these near death experiences stemmed from problems in his love-life. When Jackson fell in love with and married a young divorcee named Rachel Robards, it later turned out she wasn’t quite as divorced as she had thought. At the time, only a man could petition for divorce, so Rachel had to rely on her estranged, jealous husband to grant her a divorce. Everything eventually got sorted out, but the damage was done. When a man named Charles Dickinson published some unsavory comments about Mrs. Jackson in a newspaper and finished his statement with a challenge to a duel, Jackson accepted, despite knowing Dickinson was a deadly shot. Jackson let Dickinson shoot first, and took a bullet to the chest that could never be removed because it was too close to his heart. He then raised his pistol, aimed, and fired, shooting Dickinson dead. All told, Jackson engaged in as many as 44 duels over his lifetime. In his old age, he quipped that he “rattled like a bag of marbles.”

I can’t help but admire that sort of toughness, so I was excited to visit The Hermitage, his home for over 40 years. We arrived in Nashville on a sweltering midsummer day. Even with the almost unbearable heat the visitor center was crawling with people. Walking into his stately plantation, I expected to enter an inner sanctum of machismo. Surely the house would positively reek of the tough life of our illustrious seventh president.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. The walls were covered in narrative wallpaper based on classical myths which the tour guides assured us was authentic multiple times. While I can appreciate this as a feat of historic preservation, the Hermitage was home to the second most horrifying wallpaper I have ever seen (first place goes to a home in historic Deerfield, MA that depicted the death of Captain Cook at the hands of Hawaiian cannibals. Seriously.) A vast majority of the items in the house were original, which the tour guides are very proud of, as well they should be.

The house was large, spacious, and quite feminine. This was no doubt the influence of his daughter-in-law, whose tastes ran towards the expensive. Jackson and his wife adopted three children: Andrew Jackson, Jr., the the son of her sister (his twin stayed with his birth parents), a Native American boy named Theodore about whom little is known, and an orphaned Creek boy with the best name ever, Lyncoya Jackson. He also served as the guardian to eight other children. I never thought of Jackson as a family man, but standing in the Hermitage, you can imagine the laughter of children sailing in from the backyard.

The most affecting part of the tour was Rachel Jackson’s grave, which is located in the garden next to the house. She died a short time before Jackson’s inauguration, and he believed she was killed by the stress of a messy campaign which prominently featured her checkered past. On her tombstone is a epitaph written by Jackson: "Her face was fair, her person pleasing, her temper amiable, and her heart kind. She delighted in relieving the wants of her fellow-creatures,and cultivated that divine pleasure by the most liberal and unpretending methods. To the poor she was a benefactress; to the rich she was an example; to the wretched a comforter; to the prosperous an ornament. Her pity went hand in hand with her benevolence; and she thanked her Creator for being able to do good. A being so gentle and so virtuous, slander might wound but could not dishonor. Even death, when he tore her from the arms of her husband, could but transplant her to the bosom of her God.”

I tend to think of Andrew Jackson as a wild man who lived a rough and tumble life, but The Hermitage showed his gentler side. Jackson may have been capable of extreme violence, but he was also capable of deep love. He may have been known as a dominating presidential personality, but when it came to decorating his home, he deferred to the judgment of the women in his life. Still, I wonder sometimes whether he was tempted to shoot the wallpaper right off the walls. 

Presidential House Retrospective: The Visit of Good Feelings

In which the author reminisces on previous presidential house visits. This post chronicles my third presidential house visit in 2008.

James Monroe is a difficult man to dislike.

The last of the presidents who was also a Founding Father, his presidency coincided with a time of relative peace in the United States. After the breakdown of the Federalist Party, Monroe ran unopposed in 1816. The only reason his election was not unanimous was because one elector abstained in order to ensure that only George Washington had that honor. His time in office was dubbed “The Era of Good Feelings.” Even a financial crisis couldn’t put Monroe out of office. He is the only president to have been re-elected after presiding over a panic. The only memorable controversy of his tenure, The Monroe Doctrine, was actually written by his Secretary of State, John Quincy Adams (who could have used some of his boss’s charm).

Monroe was perhaps too likable. His genial popularity now seems like plain old mediocrity. I prefer to think of it as competency, a trait that seems to have all but disappeared from modern government. Still, James Monroe is like the safe boyfriend the protagonist of a romantic comedy leaves at the last moment for the exciting, romantic male lead (for our purposes, Andrew Jackson).

For this reason, I am pre-disposed to like James Monroe even more. I am the kind of person who thinks Sleepless in Seattle would have been improved if Meg Ryan had forgotten about Tom Hanks and stuck with Bill Pullman (this may have something to do with my love of Bill Pullman, but I digress). Sure James Monroe’s presidency wasn’t that exciting, but excitement is often overrated. The man led a politically unified America the likes of which was never seen again. He was an amazing diplomat and an excellent administrator.

So I was a little disappointed by my visit to Ash Lawn-Highland, his country estate that is only a few miles outside of Charlottesville, VA. After the beautiful dysfunction of Monticello, Ash Lawn-Highland is a bit of a letdown. It looks like a country manor house from a mid-90s BBC period drama. Normally, this would thrill me, but I had hoped to learn more about what made Monroe tick. I wanted insight into the man beyond that he was likable.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t much to be had. The entire house oozed with an air of pleasant domesticity. It was easy to imagine a family living there comfortably. The house is full of elegant decorations and portraits of friends Monroe had made while in public service. They seem for the most part like polite, impersonal gifts from important people that were put on display so as not to offend the gift givers, and also to remind the viewer that Monroe knew some exceptional people.

However, one of these friendly reminders rises above the rest and makes for a great story, or at least a great Tour Guide Story. There is a bust of Napoleon in the drawing room that is little too large for the room. The face is modeled less on the general himself and more on classical Roman sculpture. It is also a physical representation of one of those surprising connections that crop up quite a bit when you study history.

James Monroe was serving as Minister to France in Paris when the French Revolution broke out. He and his wife were well-regarded in French society, even when the monarchy fell. After Napoleon’s rise to power, the Monroe’s sent their eldest daughter Eliza to a prestigious girl’s school in France that was founded by a down-on-her-luck aristocrat. Another one of her pupils was Hortense de Beauharnais, daughter of Empress Josephine and step-daughter to Napoleon himself. Eliza Monroe and Hortense became friends at school and maintained their friendship throughout their lives, even though their paths diverged quite dramatically.

While Eliza Monroe returned to America, got married, and started a family, Hortense was contracted in a political marriage to Napoleon’s brother/her step-uncle Louis who was the King of Holland. The marriage was apparently quite miserable; according to Wikipedia, “she was much liked by the public, which annoyed her husband.” Despite this documented dislike, the couple managed to have three sons, one of whom became Napoleon III.

Eliza Monroe had an inconsequential life in comparison to her friend, but given the choice, I would choose her life over Hortense’s. Excitement and misery often go hand in hand, and Hortense was often depressed. She may have been a queen, but she felt like a prisoner. Similarly, reading about Napoleon and his exploits is a lot more interesting than reading about James Monroe, but Monroe was the man you would want to have as your leader. Political upheaval and war make for riveting history books, but is less pleasant to actually live through.

So maybe I’m being too hard on James Monroe. Sometimes good is for the best. 

Presidential Home Retrospective: duPont v. Madison

In which the author reminisces on previous presidential house visits. This post chronicles my third presidential house visit in 2008.

I have always felt a special kinship with James Madison. When I was in fourth grade and stuffing my brain with presidential trivia, he was one of the most memorable presidential superlatives-- the smallest president at 5’4” and 100 pounds. At the time, 5’4” seemed tall. I was just about 4’7” at the time, completely average, and hating it. I wanted to be as tall as a president. During the next year, I hit a massive growth spurt and started inching toward the magic number. Finally, in the middle of fifth grade I hit 5’4”; I was the same height as James Madison, and I was officially tall. Nine years and four inches later, I still don’t picture James Madison as a small man. He is forever linked in my mind to the moment I no longer felt average.

After visiting Monticello, my mom and I were looking at those town maps for kids to scope out other things to do in the area. I noticed Montpelier, home of James Madison, was quite close to Monticello. Even factoring in the weird scale of those maps, it couldn’t be more than ten minutes away, so we decided to pay it a quick visit.

After a half hour winding through the Virginia countryside, I took a closer look at the map and noticed there was a small note on the road leading to Montpelier that said 30 miles of road had been cut out (I later found out this same journey took Thomas Jefferson eight hours by carriage). By that time, we were almost there anyway, so we decided to just keep going. We arrived at Montpelier just in time for the last tour of the day. We watched a short instructional video detailing the history of the Madison family and the various alterations made to the house over the years.

Then it was on to the house itself, which turned out to be completely void of furniture and decorations. After Madison’s death, his wife Dolley could no longer afford the house, so she sold it to a Richmond merchant named Henry W. Moncure. The house exchanged hands several times until it was eventually bought by the duPont family in 1901. Its final owner, Marion duPont Scott, lived in the house until 1983. She re-landscaped, redecorated, and rebuilt Montpelier to suit her tastes. This included adding a racetrack to the grounds, completely changing the facade, and decorating the house in a gaudy art deco style. When she died in 1983, she willed the house to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and the long restoration process began.

Standing in the middle of the dining room at Montpelier, I could feel my righteous anger rise in full force. I couldn’t help but feel it was a form of sacrilege. The home of someone as important to our nation’s founding as James Madison should have been carefully preserved and cared for, not changed utterly as Montpelier was. To the Marion duPont Scott’s credit, she too felt that Montpelier ought to be a “historic shrine” to James Madison, and put such a stipulation in her will. Still, I couldn’t help but feel something sacred had been violated. 

Because of the unfinished nature of Montpelier, on the tour of the house we got a crash course in historic preservation. We were shown how they peeled back layers of paint until they determined which layer was from the Madison time period. The tour guide shared with us how they used letters and diary entries to determine door and furniture placement.


Stripped down to its barest elements, the house felt spacious and light. Even though it was undecorated, Montpelier still gave a visitor the sense of the Madison hospitality. You could imagine Dolley giving lively dinner parties in the large dining room and picture James writing at his desk in his office, trying to formulate a plan for a new government. No matter how many hands Montpelier has passed through, it still maintains the spirit of the Madisons.

Outside on the grounds was a small temple where Madison would take breaks and think about various republics and democracies of the past. Standing there, James Madison was not a small man; he was an intellectual giant, quietly contemplating how to create a more perfect union. 

Presidential House Retrospective: At Home in Springfield

In which the author reminisces on previous presidential house visits. This post chronicles my first ever presidential house visit in 2000.

My first experience with a presidential home was Abraham Lincoln's family home in Springfield, IL. I was eight years old, and my family was in the middle of our Great Tour of the Midwest. We were making the rounds at various spots where our both our living and dead relatives lived. That summer my brother and I learned a great deal about our family history, so it only seemed fitting to fit in some national history as well.

I remember very little about the house itself. It was a cheery yellow color and surrounded by a short fence. The only thing I distinctly recall about the interior was how small the bed was. My image of Lincoln was as more giant than man, and I wondered how such a tall man fit in such a short bed.

What made a real impression on me was Lincoln's tomb, which we visited after we toured the house. The tomb itself is surrounded by an elaborate monument with a balcony and massive statues of horses and soldiers and, of course, the man himself. It is a dramatic structure somewhat at odds with my vision of Honest Abe, the folksy lawyer turned president. It was only later that I recognized that the tomb celebrated Lincoln the martyr to unity and liberty. The problem with martyrdom is that the person's death becomes the climax of your life, with no falling action so what they did in life is marginalized. His humor and intelligence are not present at his tomb like they were in his house.

We were informed that there would be a color guard salute in an hour, and afterward we would be able to go down into the tomb itself. We did what most people with an hour to kill in a cemetery would do: we looked at some gravestones and speculated. I should note that as I child I visited a lot of cemeteries in order to visit various deceased relatives, distant or otherwise, and developed a love of cemeteries. So the prospect of an hour in an unfamiliar cemetery was not necessarily unwelcome.

As we wandered around the grounds, we came across a large mausoleum reminiscent of a beehive. It belonged to John R. Tanner, a former governor of Illinois. Although there was plenty of room inside the tomb, his two wives were buried next to him. From looking at the dates on the tombstones, my dad figured out that Tanner's second wife was significantly younger than him. That was the day I learned the term "trophy wife," and I was both repulsed and intrigued by the concept. I was apparently so taken by the idea that I wrote about it in my diary that night, in the style of a lurid melodrama, as only an eight year old can write a lurid melodrama. 

Transcript (glorious typos intact): 

"John R. Tanner was Governor of Illnois for 4 years. His wife, Laurretta, was peacful untill......They got in Divorce! Then John, had a Trophy wife! 2 years after they married, John died. He is all alone in a tomb shaped like a bee hive. His wives next to his tomb. Unlike Abe. His sons and wife were buried with him. John R. Tanner is now gone."

I recently looked up John R. Tanner on Wikipedia, purveyor of all knowledge. Turns out he was a pretty cool guy and not a soap opera villain. However, I noted with satisfaction that Wikipedia describes his second wife as "socially connected," which is just a nicer way of saying she was a trophy wife. So maybe my version of events was more accurate than I thought.

I learned an important lesson at Springfield-- history is a story. It can be reinterpreted and rewritten, erased and recovered. In my eight year old hands, John. R. Tanner was a lecherous sleazebag, and at Lincoln's tomb, our 16th president is raised to mythical levels.  Lincoln is a national hero deserving of grand tribute, and so his tomb is huge and grandiose to emphasize his importance, not necessarily to reflect his personality. I prefer the Lincoln who couldn't fit in his bed, a man too large for his world. My Lincoln was a gentle giant, whose humility belied a shrewd political mind and incredible strength of character. 

Also, his wife was buried with him, not next to him.